Doing hard time at Christmas

Black cake, ham, sorrel, family and friends, children opening presents full of glee and lots of good cheer. A picture perfect portrait of Christmas. No matter where we are in the world, most of us cherish the warmth of the season and all the little things we take for granted that mean so very much.

When we focus on the needy at Christmas, seldom do we cast a glance toward prison. Whether they deserve the time or not, we should still remember that we can all feel a longing for the closeness of family, especially for our children, at this time of year. The longing and pining are equally tough on either side of the prison wall.

Children of offenders are almost doubly punished during yuletide, facing the absence of their parent and the stigma of an incarcerated mother or father. Children of offenders are said to be the most challenged and vulnerable group. Separation from the love and support of that parent can often lead to great disadvantage. Adversity finds its grip in disrupting their behaviours, mental health and education.

The article, Mothering at a Distance: What Incarcerated Mothers Value about a Parenting Programme, outlines how maternal incarceration places children at high risk for developmental and emotional difficulties, not to mention the ravaging of their first bond of attachment, so vital to them succeeding in healthy relationships and as good parents in the future.

In fact, it is quite common that the dysfunction these children witness is intergenerational with parental incarceration being part of a complex cycle of abusive parenting, trauma, poverty, substance abuse and or mental or physical illness. Studies paint an even more dismal picture of daughters of incarcerated mothers. Researchers Rossiter and others suggest that they often experience substance abuse at an early age, early sexual intercourse, violence in dating relationships, sexual abuse and are consequently at high risk for STI’s and unwanted pregnancies.

Our prison, while home to more males, houses females who are usually the primary caregivers to minor children. In the 2018 U.C. Davis Law Review, Ocen mentions that women’s incarceration chiefly functions to regulate the reproductive capacity of women viewed as “unfit for procreation”. Ocen then asserts that our society ensures that deviant mothers are corralled into a penal system that marks them as unsuitable to either procreate or parent by virtue of their lawbreaking. Unfortunately, incarcerated women are often stigmatized as lacking the competence to parent or even be of any value to their children.

In 2016, Aiello and McQueeney found an incarcerated mother’s identity which is the most cherished, is the first to be lost. These mothers, subject to public scorn, are deemed triply deviant: guilty of breaking the law, violating society’s view of a good woman, and abandoning their sacred duty of childcare. Not hard to imagine why these women struggle internally and externally with being separated from their children. Harder still when their own children guilt them into believing that they are not “proper or good” mothers. Stearns’ research in 2019 identified that inmate mothers have the complexity of being mothers when their own children question it.

Community Prisoner Mothers program, a facility created in California to house inmate mothers and their minor children, was one attempt to usher in a better way. Sadly, despite its best rehabilitative and therapeutic attempts to enhance relationships between incarcerated mothers and their offspring, it was found wanting as a healthy environment for raising children or promoting parental autonomy.

Another program in New South Wales, Mothering at a Distance, reaped the best results. It improved parenting skills and confidence, changed parenting attitudes about child discipline, and increased maternal sensitivity. Its participants stated that they valued the hope it created and recognition of their critical role as mothers, a fact frequently overlooked in correctional facilities.

Christmas is a wonderful time to look around at those we hold dear, to look upward to the true meaning of the season and most importantly, inward, to reflect on our own lives and those of others whose time may not be as festive – namely the minor children of our inmates.

Cherith Pedersen

Clinical Mental Health Counsellor & Expressive Arts therapist

Gaia Creative Arts Counselling